30 days later...

This is definitely a late post. I am aware of that.

I have been absorbing the lessons from my disastrous attempt to spend 30 days actually doing something...well, anything, really.

1. Have a plan. Knowing what it is you want to do has to be more successful than thinking "Right. It's Monday. What do I want to do now?", because that sucked big time as a method of achieving stuff.
2. Related to the above, spend some time working out where it is you want to improve. Fumbling and bumbling and guessing and hoping it will come to you is probably not going to work. It didn't for me at any rate.
3. Failing is okay. Not being able to get it together has shown me the deficiencies in my "plan".

That's it. It took a week to sort out, but that's it. Distilled knowledge, people. Lap it up.

In the short term I'm reacquainting myself with GTD. I had my GTD mojo at the start of the year but it slowly ebbed away as I get a little cocky that I was on top of things. I let my whole system fall apart. Time to rebuild it.

One of the unexpected side-benefits of this process is that my wife has started to get really down with all the clutter we have in our life and our house. We're slowly working on reducing the amount of useless crap we have accumulated. We have both greatly reduced the amount of paperwork we have lying around the house. The shredder has been getting a really good work out. I have also started to be a bit ruthless about what books I will keep and which ones I will get move on. It's been liberating, in a way.

All up, an interesting experience, and one worth trying again after a little bit of preparation.

Days 27 - 29: It's a trap!

This 30 Days experiment has revealed to me a part of myself that I was only dimly aware of previously - there's a part of my self that likes to set me up and try and make me fail. It attempts to trap me and keep me down. I don't know why it does this but I am aware of it more than ever. It tries to lure me in with promises of change and success and excitement but then tries to keep me in the same old rut, doing the same old tired things. I need to change this. I also have to want to change this. I think the want is nearly there as well.

The last three days have been mildly productive. I did some study (that's going to be a common theme for the next three months); we both finally filled out those forms I have been blathering about for weeks; I fiddled with our broken camera and narrowed down the problem to the zoom lens in some capacity; I finished backing up the home videos on DVD; I checked out some second hand filing cabinets with a view to picking up a couple for the study/studio/computer room; I took the boy out of the house for a couple of hours to give his mother some much-needed peace and creativity time; and at work I individually numbered 200+ pages in my new files, in amongst the day to day activities that keep the machinery of government working.

Like I said, mildly productive. You can make even the laziest of days seem productive if you go to the effort of listing everything that you have done.

I might not have achieved all that much over the last 29 days, but I am learning a lot about myself and how I work. Trying to make substantial changes to the way I do things without a game plan is like leading my self-confidence to the slaughter. I hope to repeat something like this soon(ish). I intend to be better prepared.

Meal worm in venus fly trap originally uploaded to Flickr by blmurch. Used under a Creative Commons BY-SA 2.0 licence.

Day 25 & 26: The train wreck continues

Soon you will be able to look away as this train wreck is nearly over.

Once again work has been up and down. This time I have been waiting for some file covers to arrive from Records Management as I've filled up the files I had. One of them arrived today so I'm in the process of filling that one up. A number of briefings and pieces of correspondence have also started their epic journey upstream through the clearance process. It can be a slow and torturous path at times.

Meanwhile, the metaphorical list of things I need to do around the house continues to grow and grow. I am going to have to turn it into an actual list if I hope to get anything done. While I'm going to do a full review of the 30 day experiment when the time has passed, the number one thing I have learnt out of all of this is that if I don't have a physical list of actions, they are not going to get done.

The second thing I have learnt is that even if I only fill half of my 10 book allocation on the Safari Online library, the potential for time wasting is enormous. Right now I'm splitting my time between the Windows Vista Missing Manual and Ebay Hacks 2nd Edition.

Tonight I need to do some introductory reading on XML for my XML Technologies subject. I also think I'm being lined up to do a bit of video editing and uploading as the boy has been acting all cute again, apparently.

Train Wreck was originally uploaded to Flickr by zimpenfish and is used under a Creative Commons By Attribution Sharealike 2.0 licence.

Day 24: Slowly on the move

I was going to provide an update via email sent from my phone but I pushed a wrong button and canceled it completely. This much shorter message is Take 2.

I ticked off some chores (I now have an appointment with a specialist next week to have my knee looked at) but my work is still all process and no endgame. It is my own fault and this experiment is showing me I need to take greater control of my own destiny.

Very little will get done at home tonight. I'm still on the bus coming home from uni. It has been a long day already and I have no desire to make it any longer.

I wonder how you apply labels to a post submitted via email?

Edited 24/07/07 21:40 to fix punctuation and formatting and to add a label. Emailing isn't perfect, it would seem, but it's probably cool for short updates.

Day 23: In review

It's only Day 23 (technically yesterday was Day 23) but I've already decided that this experiment has not worked as planned. My day job is getting done, albeit at a slow and disappointing pace. Things are flat at the office and while there's work to be done, no one really feels inclined to power on through it. I think it's a function of what we do, in that when Parliament sits we're at the beck and call of our political masters and when it doesn't, we hit a slump as the urgency fades away and the adrenaline wears off.


On the upside, I have far less filing to complete compared to Day 1, so there have been some benefits.


It's the tasks around the house that have left me the most despondent with my progress. I started off with some great mental motivation but that didn't last long. There are many tasks floating around in the back of my mind that I have left uncompleted and there are probably some that are even unacknowledged. The only substantial thing I did achieve was to clean up my desk in our study. However, that was a couple of weeks ago and I've fed off that achievement for far too long.


Ideas are starting to coalesce in my mind about where I went wrong. My immediate thoughts are that I lacked structure and planning. I also don't think I was fully committed to it, although I thought I was. Being sick for a week in the middle of it didn't help either.


As for what I actually achieved on Day 23, there's not much to say. My day to day work moved along with nothing getting finished but at least with nothing left behind or ignored. Filing, briefings, general paperwork - all in motion. At home, I began backing up a couple of DVD home videos of the boy so that we can reuse the DVDs in the camera. That took far longer than I expected and thinking about it right now, I think it was because I forgot to reset the power settings of the laptop from Power Saver to Full Power. D'oh.

Days 19-22: Fading Fast

I'm failing and I know it. I'm starting to sink at an ever increasing rate and it's somewhat concerning to me that after only three weeks, whole days are once more passing without anything substantial being achieved at all.

Old habits are indeed hard to to break.

Friday saw another pointless day of printing, filing and discarding. This is time consuming and dull but necessary. I should be thankful that at the moment there is sufficient time at work to undertake this activity or my filing would be in even worse shape than it already is.

The weekend saw me sacrifice my own productivity to help boost my wife's. I took the boy out with me for a couple of hours Saturday afternoon to watch our first division team play (and get spanked again - they are not having a good season - of course, we took our own beating earlier in the afternoon so it's a club wide misery at the moment). He got to sit around, eat cold Vegemite toast and yell at the players, which means he had a good afternoon. H. was able to get some singing practice done. Sunday morning I took Elijah shopping with me as I spent some of my birthday money on CDs. He got antsy after a while so I didn't get to check out the bookshop and as a consequence, we were only gone for about 90 minutes. H. was able to get more stuff done around the house that had been bothering her, so I guess it wasn't in vain.

Today has been a mixed bag. I've finally finished the printing and collating the filing for my major work project. All I need to do now is to throw it in its file and folio it (ie manually and sequentially number each page - fun. Woo. Hold me back...). Hopefully tonight I can finish off some financial documents that we've been trying to fill out for weeks (various motivational crises have struck this particular issue). I also hope to try and back up some of the home DVDs of Bugs.

I've got to get this back on track, I'm just not sure how right now.

Oh, I forgot that since my wife gave me a bunch of t-shirts for my birthday, I had to make room for them. As a consequence, I have a pile of old and/or holey t-shirts in the bedroom waiting for me to either throw out or donate next weekend (the nearest charity bin requires me to drive there, so it can wait for the weekend).

Day 18: Fuzzy

Today has been another one of those strange days. I printed off a bunch of stuff that will eventually be placed on my most important file. I need to finish off the printing tomorrow and then do the whole date order thing before I do the big hole punching deal, and top it off with some "folioing" (which means I have to manually number each page). I achieved something, that much is clear. Whether it's all I could have achieved is another thing altogether.

I think my work is expanding to fill the available time, which is becoming frustrating. I can't wait for Parliament to sit again. Then the crunch will be back on.

I now have another copy of the financial forms we need to fill out. That's on the list for tomorrow. Tonight, I need to go to bed.

Day 17: Tax-o-rama

The less said about work the better. Things are moving along, but slowly. Filing is getting done, gradually. It could be done faster, and therein lies my issues with my own motivation. I'm slipping back into old habits and inefficient work practices again. I think I will need to re-evaluate how I'm going about this in the workplace. Hmmm, should be fun.

Tonight, however, I've started doing something that most people hate, but I love to do as early as I can and get over and done with. I have begun my taxes. Woo! Sadly, the main reason I love doing my taxes is that I use the eTax system.

Yes, I enjoy doing my taxes because I can geek it up while doing it.

Tax Time originally posted to Flickr by Scot. Used under a Creative Commons BY-SA 2.0 license.

Day 16: The Slump

I've hit a motivation crisis a little sooner than I was hoping. Actually, I figured I could keep myself motivated for a measly 30 days. Apparently, not so much.

Work is patchy at the moment. I have found from experience that if work is busy, it is easier for me to keep motivated and organised. When work comes in spurts, it is all too easy to drift along and get sidetracked on unimportant things.

Today I futzed around far too much. I'm not happy and I'm not impressed. I started a bunch of things and upon reflection, I don't think I actually finished anything at all. Bother. That makes this day something of a failure. Again.

Football training got called off tonight due to wet weather. This is a good thing which means I get to sit at home and spend time with my lovely wife (the computer gets turned off very soon).

Probably not much will get done tonight given it's my birthday. Yay. Here's a picture of the orange and poppy seed cake I baked for my birthday and took to work.

My workplace has the tradition where if it is your birthday, you bring a cake. This way, you are not constantly chipping in for birthday cakes for other people. It works out easiest for everyone and is something that makes perfect sense to me.

Maybe I'll do some more shredding tonight. That seems to be my fall back, when all else fails option.

Day 15: Weird accomplishments

After being home sick for a week, today was catch up day. I only had about 50 emails to work through, although I did need to action or think about almost all of them. This took the bulk of the day to work through. I also knocked off a handful of errands in my lunch hour and early afternoon. A busy day productively spent, although I don't know that I really achieved anything. Like I said, weird accomplishments.

Some shredding will be in order tonight, the perfect task for ad breaks.

Tonight I'm baking a cake. Ask me why tomorrow.

Day 13 & 14 - Success!

Success in the scheme of things at any rate. More work needs to be done, but after the lethargy and loss of momentum from the last week, I feel good that I've achieved something again.

Before

The messy and almost unusable desk in the study. The monitor on the left (which takes up a lot of space) is actually attached to the rarely used Mac G4 that sits just out of picture.

After

The Aftermath

A big ol' bag o' trash. It's mostly old print-outs, scraps of peripherals and empty boxes I should have flung out the door a long time ago.

Day 11 & 12: Big Fat Zero

It had to come, I guess. I got nothing done for Day 11. In fact, I got so little done that I'm not even blogging this until Day 12. The only thing of any note is that I finally installed GNUCash, an open source personal accounting software package. No, I didn't think that counted as much of an achievement either.

Time slipped away from me and I noticed that I had dropped back into my old time wasting habits. Day 12 isn't going much better, although I have got the car in for a service today, so that's something I guess.

Here's to hoping that the weekend ahead provides a little more joy.

Day 10: A new hope

This is the new shredder. I plan to give it a trial workout during the ads while watching House tonight.

Shredding something is better than doing nothing at all.

Day 9: More bleh

I am now officially under doctor's orders to do nothing for the rest of the week. This is a good thing, I guess, as it means I can rest and sleep and get healthy. It does make it difficult to stay productive when you have no energy and no pressure to keep moving.

I'm sure I'll survive.

I'm halfway through the CD sorting I was going to do yesterday but didn't (I went to bed early instead and slept solidly for nearly 10 hours - woo!). If it turns out I haven't seen the Gilmore Girls episode currently on the TV, I will do some more garden research.

Oh, and we now have a new shredder, bought while I spent 2.5 hours in the waiting room at the doctors. I love my wife.


Down with the sickness originally posted to Flickr by Mayr. Used under a Creative Commons BY 2.0 licence.

Day 8: Bleh

I've been sick all day. I've achieved exactly nothing. Bleh.

Maybe I'll reorganise some CDs later or something. Something's better than nothing I guess.

Day 6 & 7 - The Shredinator

Saturdays are generally a write-off. Helen teaches in the morning and I play football in the afternoon. This Saturday was even worse as we went to a wedding instead. The wedding was beautiful and the reception was a lot of fun, but as a consequence nothing got done around the home.

On Sunday I gathered together all my loose paperwork and sorted it. The bits I needed I put in my decrepit cardboard accordion file. Those bits I didn't need were also "filed" appropriately.

Unfortunately, I also broke the shredder. I'm on the hunt for a new one now.

I have also begun sorting through all my old magazines. I don't need them and I never go back and read them so why am I keeping them?

Day 5: Filemaster

Until a week ago, I hadn't filed a single thing since I started in this job over 6 months ago. This week I have become a filing demon. Actually, not so much a demon as a minor imp, but filing imp doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

I'm not finished my filing by a long shot, but I am getting into a healthy filing groove which in turn is helping me feel a lot better about my work. I have been able to maintain a clean desk all this time (I work under an official "clean desk policy" security regime) but my desk drawers were becoming very crowded indeed. My filing blitz is helping me clear out the deadwood, which in turn is helping to clear my mind.

Parliament sits again in a couple of weeks. I'm going to hit the ground running mentally recharged. All this filing has been dragging me, more than I thought possible.

Nothing else tonight. At least not yet, at any rate. The night is still young(ish).


filing cabinets originally posted to Flickr by redjar. Used under a Creative Commons By Attribution Share-alike licence.

Day 4: I'll keep this quick

I'm trying to keep my online time to the bare minimum tonight so I'm keeping this short and sweet.

I've done twice as much filing today as I did yesterday. The more I do, the easier it gets. It helps that we're a bit light on for work (although as usual, something comes in late in the day so I can't get away early) so I can spend some time on this. I also updated a couple of documents for clearance once Parliament sits again in a few weeks time. Finally, my little mapping project is now in maintenance mode ie I only need to update it when new information comes to hand. Yay! Friday is a traditionally slow time so with a bit of luck, I could knock over the bulk of the rest and still knock off a wee bit early.

I won't be achieving anything else today, unless cuddle time counts as an achievement. In fact, I've now decided it does.

Day 3. Urgh.

This is proving to be as difficult as I thought it would be, which is a bit pathetic when you think about it. Surely it shouldn't be too difficult to achieve one thing a day.

The interesting thing is that the more I think "What am I going to get done today?", the more I notice things that really need to be done, and done much sooner rather than the later that I have become accustomed to.

Today I sorted out the electronic archival/filing system once and for all and was able to clear one entire file document backlog. It might not seem like much, but proper record keeping is an important thing.

I've spent most of these evening battling with technical difficulties while conversing with Ebay Live Help through their web-based chat. That took hours (their server kept bumping me) which meant that I didn't achieve much of anything else. Urgh.

I have got to get more organised or this is going to be an embarrassing 30 days.

Small steps

I guess (and hope) that by cranking out some of the smaller things, the bigger things will start to fall in to place. Day 2 has not exactly been an inspirational success.

I managed to push through a document for clearance a day ahead of schedule.

I sorted and collated a batch of emails ready for electronic filing and archival. It fell over at the last hurdle as I'm incorrectly assigned in the system so I can't actually file them until records management fix it. Of course, I couldn't get the right people on the phone at all today. *sigh*

On the other hand, I started a new project using "My Maps" on Google Maps, although I am not in a position to give any further details on that one.

At home I started filling out a few bank forms but I don't think I have all the information I need at hand. I thought I might get this one finished tonight but now I don't think so.

The garden planning continues. Slowly.

Like I said, small steps. Very small steps.